I'm of the belief that photographs have a natural print size. Some photos are meant to be 4x6 and look silly blown up, and some don't feel like they can breathe unless they're 20x30". Sometimes a little print just doesn't cut it.
When I print in the studio I use an HP B9180, which I like a lot, but I'll write about that some other time. The problem is that the maximum print width is 13". With a 13x19" print being about the maximum you're going to get out of it. If I want to go bigger, I send them out.
A quick aside to those who don't think there pictures will look good at 20x30" because it won't be 300dpi like you're supposed to have... Don't worry, if it's a sharp photo with good color, it'll look great. Modern cameras, especially in the 10-12MP range up-res quite nicely. Plus you're not looking at a poster with a loupe anyway, you're standing a couple feet away usually.
Hell, billboards are only 10-20dpi. So taking the long dimension of my 5D 4368px/10dpi/12inchesperfoot = a perfectly nice looking 36FT billboard.
I've done up to 24x36" from a 5D file taken handheld with a 24-105L zoom lens and they look great.
Ok, back to the story. There are plenty of places that will print your photographs mammoth size. At the high-end you can go to a fancy place like Duggal here in NYC. I've never printed with them, but they have just BEAUTIFUL stuff on the walls and their film processing has been universally excellent in my experience. The problem is that they're expensive. As in hundreds of dollars for poster size prints. And again, I'm sure they're gorgeous, but I can't afford them.
Last year I entered some prints into a competition in London, and needed to get prints done fast, so I went onto Adorama's website, uploaded my final jpegs, and then went to pick up my prints the next day. Well they didn't have them done because there was a problem with their machine or something and they didn't know when it would be fixed. I was livid because they could have at least emailed the customers to give them some info about the problem.
I was flying out in a couple days (they had to be hand delivered) so waiting for Adorama wasn't an option. So I called a place in NJ called El-Co Color that I had used to make posters once or twice before and boy am I glad I did. It was 3PM and I asked if there was any chance they could print a few posters and get them out the door by the end of the day. The woman on the phone said, "Sure, just tell them Doris said it was ok". So I went online, made sure to tell them what Doris said in the 'special instructions' field, and uploaded 5 jpegs by 3:30. At 3:45 I got an email saying they were printed and sent to shipping. Yes, 15 MINUTES later. They arrived the next morning, UPS ground and they looked fantastic. Colors were spot on, just like my screen (calibrated Eizo) and printer.
As a funny coincidence, as I got back from my computer after signing for the El-Co package, I found an email from Adorama saying my prints were ready. Curious, I hopped on the F train and went to pick up my prints. The results? ...were awful. I expected two big labs like that with the latest gear would come out similarly, but boy was I wrong. The resolution was fine, but the colors were way off. If I didn't know my files were right I'd think I had done something wrong; but with my monitor, printer, and el-co all agreeing nearly perfect, the culprit had to be Adorama. I don't know if their machine was still busted or I got a bad tech on a bad day, or they have a far too heavy handed auto-correction circuit. Whatever the reason, I won't be going back there for my printing needs. And to be honest I don't like their recent store redesign at all either.
I'm sure there are other poster printers online that do good work too. I've had experience with one other place I can't remember the name of, Print-something... Anyway, the prints were ok, much better than adorama, worse than el-co. And they were large format inkjet prints where the el-co ones are traditional color prints on Fuji paper. Oh and the best part is the price. A 20x30" poster from El-co is, wait for it, $9.95. I know crazy, right?
And no I have no affiliation with them, I just thought their work was really great.
My wife and I print almost everything on our Epson 3800 -- which lets us get prints up to 19 inches wide. So, for the most part, we don't need to send out for prints at all...though we do for HUGE prints. Here in SE Texas we have a couple of local companies that we trust, but turnaround can be a bit slow (unless you get the right tech on the right day...that sort of thing). So I appreciate the El-Co option.
We recently had some not-so-wonderful experiences with Adorama's online store...similar to your issues, but this was with backordered items rather than tardy prints.
Excellent essay. It is quite a bit more formal and complete a response than I anticipated when I posted the original question.
It is news to me that billboards were as low as 10-20dpi. I thought they were somewhere in the 70-80 range. I had in my head the idea that 200 was acceptable for prints and so when I did my math I choose 16x20 because with my camera that yielded a long side that was just slightly short of 200.
Based on this info though it sounds that if I do want larger than 16x20 I can do so. I'm going to pick up a 16x20 today that I ordered from a local shop a couple of days ago and possibly use that as a baseline and then possibly order one much larger print (size yet tbd) to do a comparison of how one size translated to another.
Thanks for taking the time to answer so completely.
John-
I took a look at the photo you linked to in your last comment. It's beautiful by the way.. however I think you might find a huge print a little soft. It might take some sharpening well, but it looks like perhaps a little camera/tripod shake during the exposure, or that the lens wasn't quite stopped down enough.. But hell for $10, it's worth a try. ;-)
Appreciate the thoughts. Most likely it was camera shake or a need for more sharpening - or both. The lens was the AF-D 80-200/f.28 continuous with the push-pull ring. My favorite lens but heavy as hell and it has no tripod mount. Various docs I have read specify that this lens's sharpest pictures are from f8 to f11 - in spite of this being greater than two full stops off the widest aperture. The photo was taken at F9.
I am intending to order this aftermarket lens collar adapter
http://www.kirkphoto.com/lenscollars.html#NCP80
Anyhow, I took the picture with a physically large lens attached to a camera body that was attached to the tripod. Not the best thing for stability or for the health of the camera body. Prior to recently I rarely shot subjects requiring a tripod.
I believe I can reproduce the shot at will either with one of my smaller lenses which will increase stability or go at it again with the big lens once I have the above mentioned collar.
Do you see it as being soft throughout the entire picture?
To my eye, yes. A lens stopped down to f/9 which isn't TACK sharp, at least in the center on what you're focusing.. something is amiss. If you can get your hands on a prime lens of similar focal length, I'd be interested in what you'd get.
But then again, I'm a bit of a pixel peeper and tend to use primes over zooms.
Thanks for this post Bill. I am gonna give el-co a try. I've always wanted to print some shots big and this will give me a reason to do so. I do have a silly question though. What do you think is the best economical way to display prints of that size...without shelling out the dough for large frames that is? I'd love to have big prints but never know how to do it on the college wallet.
Hi Keith-
Easiest way I've found to display them is to get some spray-mount and sheets of foamcore. I did a bunch of them that way for my sister last year. They look good, but I didn't use quite enough spray because the corners of a couple are coming loose.
There might be better answers, but that's what I came up with. It's true, big frames are expensive.
Bill
I picked up your blog last week, & sent a query over to our print Director for his comments. I'm guessing, as I haven't heard back from him yet, that he is wading through a backlog of emails (the Adorama offices were closed all last week). He's usually very good about getting back to me - and when he does, I will let you know.
If there is ever anything that I can help you with, please don't hestate to contact me directly: helen.oster@adoramacamera.com
sincerely
Helen Oster
Adorama Camera Customer Service Ambassador